Published June 25, 2024 by David Hecht
Last Updated October 29, 2024
Managing inbound leads is one of the areas where Salesforce shines brightest. But for small and medium businesses (SMBs), sometimes all the options and marketing software add-ons can seem overwhelming — too much money or too much work for your small team.
The good news is that you can build your very own “lead machine,” to improve conversion rates and grow your revenue, using tools that are already part of the Salesforce subscription you have (Sales Cloud). You don’t need to implement Marketing Cloud (see our Marketing on Salesforce without Marketing Cloud guide for more on that) or invest in outside marketing systems.
Getting these six lead management basics in place is not difficult, and can have an immediate impact on your bottom line. Here’s how to do it.
The first step to creating your lead machine is to establish a process for handling leads. We recommend writing this down in a short document, and making sure everyone in your organization agrees to the definitions and a common process. Even in a small team, it is common for different people to have varying opinions based on their personalities and prior experience, so it is best to get on the same page and have a written plan to refer to.
We are always amazed at how many Salesforce customers have a number of email addresses instead of a form on their “contact us” page or landing pages. If you have made an investment in Salesforce, make the change to your processes to funnel more inquiries through forms — otherwise you have a major “slip through the cracks” moment right at the start of your lead management process.
Email addresses are acceptable in some cases, such as for existing customers to contact customer service (especially if you have implemented Salesforce email-to-case). But otherwise you are likely losing data, and missing out on possible automation we’ll talk about next.
Salesforce’s Web-to-Lead form technology is easy to implement, and leads go directly into your Salesforce organization, with no data entry required or danger of being lost in someone’s email box. Just go to the Web-to-Lead area of Salesforce setup, and do the following:
For more information, see our The Ultimate Guide to Salesforce Web-to-Lead Forms.
Salesforce has some advanced tools for processing and organizing incoming leads — start using them if you are not already. Even if you just have 1 or 2 sales people, you can easily set up a Queue to own incoming leads. Then create some assignment rules that give ownership of some or all of the new leads to the Queue. You can either manually assign/claim leads from the queue, or even automate assignment of some leads to users instead of the queue, depending on the variety of leads you receive.
Since you will now be using the Web-to-Lead forms, you can also have hidden fields with pre-populated values in them which define a lead source or campaign, or indicate which form on your web site(s) a lead submitted. Those values can be very useful in driving automated actions once the leads arrive in Salesforce. Create some email templates for auto-responder emails, and have tailored auto-responses sent to the leads depending on the values they have or how they are assigned when they come in.
For more on automatic campaign assignment and lead sources, see our article Which Form or Web Page did a Salesforce lead come from?
Branching out from the core Salesforce functionality, set up a tracking application that can provide additional information about where a lead came from. This is especially critical if you are spending money on Google Ads or other online marketing, since you will want to know which advertising produced the best quality leads.
Tracking the source of your leads requires a separate app, as well as a small tracking code that needs to be placed on your web site. There are a variety of tracking apps available on the AppExchange, from the CloudAmp Campaign Tracker that we make to tracking capabilities in larger marketing software like Salesforce’s Pardot (now known as Marketing Cloud Account Engagement).
Once you have your leads coming in via web-to-lead, being tracked, assigned and having auto-responses sent out, it is time to get visibility into your lead totals and trends with one of our favorite Salesforce features, Dashboards. Having one or more lead dashboards in Salesforce can make it easier to visualize data, spot problems or successes, and quickly understand how your demand generation efforts are working at a high level.
Best of all, you don’t have to start from scratch – there are a variety of free dashboards available for download on the Salesforce AppExchange that you can use as a starting point. Just install, “Save as” the dashboards and underlying reports when you are customizing them, so you retain the originals for reference.
For Enterprise Edition of Salesforce and above, you can Subscribe to dashboards, which means scheduling them to be refreshed and emailed to you on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, for added visibility into your newly created Salesforce lead machine.
Dashboards can also be valuable for raising visibility with executives or other team members who may not log into Salesforce daily, as well as a good way to personally check your lead machine status on a regular basis from in your inbox with a cup of coffee.
After your initial auto-response Email from Salesforce when a lead comes in, consider putting an Email marketing program in place to cultivate your newly received leads. What type of email marketing program should be part of your Salesforce lead machine will vary widely depending on your target market and sales cycle.
If you are selling to technical buyers who are marketing averse, or your average sale takes just a week or two from lead to closed deal, you may not need much of an email marketing program at all. On the other hand, if your average sales cycle is 6 months, or your target audience is expecting to be educated about the need for your product, then a structured email marketing campaign over time is likely to be essential.
There are a variety of tools available for email newsletters, drip email campaigns, and more. From affordable and simple to more expensive and full featured, some popular options are:
So there you have it, a complete demand generation and lead management machine in 6 easy steps, using out of the box Salesforce. There are plenty of other options to explore, such as lead scoring, web analytics integration, and more, but these 6 basic areas should get you on the road to a better process, more converted leads, and ultimately more closed sales.
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